Crops

I’m not privy to the inside story on the strikes experienced in the fruit sector recently. According to what I’ve read, Dutoit Group in the Western Cape and Umbhaba Bananas in Mpumalanga have been at the forefront of the current wave.

Fruit farmers in the Ceres Valley will have to manage their water strategically this season, as parts of the region received less than half the annual rainfall. Louis Reynolds of Fruitful Crop Advice provides some tips on reducing water losses.

Growing vegetables is highly competitive, demanding and arguably the most difficult branch of agriculture in which to succeed, especially for new entrants.

The farm Matroozefontein has the most westerly citrus orchards and table grape vineyards in Southern Africa. In this arid area, farming under nets has proved a success.

The move to stock ‘almost perfect’ fruit and vegetables has for many years been an obsession in supermarkets abroad.

Previously, I described how the high mineral content of borehole water could cause mineral build-up on leaf surfaces, with consequences for the application of chemicals.

All the production processes in the Uys family’s mixed farming enterprise, from grazing management to cash crops and cover crop production, occur in rotation to benefit one another as well as the soil.

I’ve often written in this column about how stimulating the fresh produce sector can be.

Here are some guidelines for growing vegetables under drought conditions.

Fresh produce markets have an interesting history. Go back more than 150 years and you’ll find a person called the market master who worked for the local municipality and also sold farmers’ produce by auction.

Western Cape fruit farmer Aat Hoekstra (85) recently received the South African fruit industry’s OSH Reinecke Industry Leader Award for 2015. The British Journal of Fresh Produce has also referred to him as South Africa’s fruit-breeding pioneer. He shared his wisdom with Glenneis Kriel.

Just about every farmer would agree that crop rotation is a good thing – and the more diverse the crops in the rotation, the better.

Recently named the Agricultural Writer of SA’s Farmer of the Year for 2015, Piet Karsten has built a farming empire on the Orange River, where some of SA’s top export fruit is grown. Susan Marais visited the Karsten Group’s headquarters in Kanoneiland in the Northern Cape to learn more.

The ‘Codes of Best Practice (CoBP) for National Fresh Produce Markets’ prepared by the Project Rebirth Steering Committee (chaired by the department of agriculture) will bring our fresh produce markets in line with international standards.

No-till is highly practical for small-scale vegetable farmers and organic farmers, while conventional commercial vegetable growers will find some aspects of the practice useful.

I suppose that being in the fresh produce business makes it inevitable that I classify markets according to their size – not unlike potatoes or certain fruit.

Soil quality determines the quality of produce, the volume of water needed to produce it and ultimately the production cost. Restoring degraded soil takes time, but thereafter production costs plummet. Jay Ferreira spoke to organic nut farmer Jeremy Bryant to learn more.

No-till farmers have always known that leaving a layer of crop residue on the soil surface increases the humus content.

To achieve a HACCP (Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points) accreditation is costly.

Viewing the current drought in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal within its historical context allows us to understand it better – and forecast more accurately what is to come. This is according to Dr Johan Malherbe from the Agricultural Research Council’s Institute for Soil, Climate and Water.